Thats quite a generous thing to offer people and I might take you up on it at some point. I'll be interested in what sorts of things you see in a log parse.

The main things I've been checking lately are: Rip and Rake uptime above 80% - its actually harder than it sounds (well for me anyhow - don't think I've ever been above 85% for both despite not clipping), Savage Roar uptime, and percentage of shred vs autoattack damage. It's quite easy to let auto overtake Shred I found, especially when doing lots of movement or with bosses who force you to flip a around a lot.

Nam, looks like you're doing everything perfectly. Regemming for +agi at this point would be pretty much a wash; with JC, you can get to a higher ArPen level than most, so I wouldn't worry about it. Spend some EoF's on a Herkuml when you earn them, snap up a WFS when you can, and you'll be good.

I suspect the answer is - "not much in it" as rawr and test dummy suggest. But be interested to know what you (and others) think. Rawr doesnt seem to value hit and expertise too highly and I never have either but Im kinda stuck gearwise as the guild is not breaking into 277 gear so in sheer boredom Im trying to eek out bit more dps

You need the 4 piece T10 bonus. It is better then ilvl 277 non bonus. It is THAT good. I constantly beat this other kitty who has a mixture of 264+ non tier pieces. I have one sactified and the other three ilvl 251 T10. With a 73%+ crit rate I beat his dps on every fight.

Don't fall into the false premise that higher item level means better gear. Rake is the highest DPE attack you have and the bonus makes it crit. With a high crit that is a hugh increase in overall dps.

What to gear for now depends on hard cap ArP. If you are close that the gear that gets you there. If not close then both RAWR and TOSKKS suggest more crit (till capped) and hit/expertise till capped.

The logic behind this is with the bonus you want it to crit as much as possible. And with a high crit and high hit/expertise you build CP's very fast. But with ArP things are a little different. However, you neeed 1300+ in total ArP for it to really over take the other options.

Haste and ArP go together well. But it seems the options are higher crit/haste vs. higher hit/exp. So what you really need to do is compare how much crit/haste there is to how much hit/exp. 100 crit vs. 10 hit means crit. 100 hit vs. 10 hit well you get the picture. So without knowing the exact numbers it is too hard to tell.

Go to TOSKKS/RAWR and plug both sets in. Look at relative weights for the sats and then multiple to see which is better. Even if you say the other stats (agility/ArP) are close this doesn't mean they are identical.

The short answer is it depends on your other gear - but in general an ilvl 264 Shaft of Glacial Life will be superior to an ilvl 264 Distant land as long as it does not put you over the hit cap. Haste is the last filler stat after arpen, crit, hit and expertise. It has equal crit and agi, more attack power and better gem slot colors than Distant Land.

RAWR would give you a good idea about the relative values of the two gear sets though as you are talking about swapping 3 pieces of gear and not just a weapon.

As a side note, even though it is (theoretically) slightly less single target DPS to keep yourself hit capped and expertise capped prior to capping arpen, I prefer to do that for consistency of rotation and add fights. In the end the differences are small compared to the overall damage we do. Also, when you start getting 277 gear, any of the 277 weapons will be better than the Shaft of Glacial Life, so you will have to redo your setup. Most likely you will be using tier legs at that point though, and the Aldriana's (which are slightly better than tier and easier to get at the 277 level than 277 tokens).

Armory link: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-shee ... n=WrathfulMy question is fairly simple but I have not found the answer I am looking for anywhere. With my current gear I am right at the expertise cap and low on hit rating my dps in 10 and 25 mans looks pretty solid right now even though I am pretty new to the kitty game. I am getting ready to get the badge cloak, but was concerned because that will drop my expertise and hit rating even lower although it sucks sometimes to miss I am still able to maintain the kitty rotation. Should I go for the cloak and not worry bout hit and exp caps? It seems everything that is an upgrade to me at this point will be putting me in much the same situation should I gem for hit/exp? Thanks in advance for your time and input. Oh btw I'll probably be changing my boot enchant tonight to icewalker.

At your current gear level (below 1100 arp) hit and expertise are not as importent right now. If you drop the cloak you should be at 20 expertise which is just fine. Hit you should at least try and stay above 150 if you can for the time being. When you reach the point when you start fully gemming for arp then hit and expertise will become more importent. For now I would try and pick up Woodins Lucky Neckless. Sure you lose a little bit of arp, but its a nice chunk of hit and several improved stats. You can find it on the AH for a decent price, or be hopeful of the trash drop.

Gemming for hit and expertise should only start happening when you are close to hitting both the hard arp cap (1360 + food), and the white crit cap (76% on your character sheet fully buffed + idol active). Until that point gemming for either is just robbing you of stats you need more.

Thanks for the quick reply Tinderhoof and thanks for the advice what you said sounds like how I was feeling I just had nothing to back that up with and given that I am new to feral I don't trust my gut yet. Lucky for me my guild ran 25 ICC last night and I got a ring from Marrowgar with some hit on it and the gloves from rotface or festergut don't rember which atm. I also got the cloak last night and I must say my numbers are looking great now was albe to get the first byte on BQ and just tore up the meters. Thanks again for the help.

Happy to help. And Pimpin for you with the ring and those gloves. What you will find interesting is when you get to BiS is all of your hit is from 2 rings (Rep ring, Bone Band or Heroic Helion ring), and all of your expertise comes from your Tier pants. The rest you have to gem for. It is really odd as the whole expantion has been crazy for gemming. First it was strength, the all agility, then for the last 3 tiers arp. Now I am gemming hit?.....Wait What?

Actually that's really cool cause that is the ring I just got. The great thing is my guild just got to LK on 25 man last week so once we down him it's on to hard modes. Outta curiosity what BiS list are you using cause I was going by the one on EJ, but they have some TOCG 25 man gear on their non hard mode list and I don't see myself getting in there to get that stuff.

Gratz on the LK kill. To answer your first question the EJ BiS list is a bit out of date. With the new Ruby Sanc gear out now a lot has changed. Something else to think about is that BiS lists are a nice wish list, but not a set in stone template. The issue with the EJ BiS lists is no one ever fills out the non heroic list before you have access to heroic gear. If you just go by the lists its really hard to be effective.

Its all about balancing your stats. The boots mentioned by EJ's list are the Icewalker Treds. They give a great amount of hit and arp. The down side is when you have an older piece of gear with that high of a stat that gets you to a cap (76 hit) it can make swaping it out really hard.

Right now your gear is in a pretty good place. You are only Oathbinder (LK staff), Death Bringers Will or Sharpened Twilight Scale away from being able to gem full ArP. I would still recomend trying to get a hit neck. Woodins is good, or you can get the neck off of 10man Festergut.

Actually we just got LK we haven't downed him yet, but I'm sure we will very soon. I plan on getting one of those necks just can't afford the the BOE yet and haven't been lucky enough to see either one drop yet. As far as BiS list I understand they are not the end all be all and wouldn't pass up an upgrade just cause it's not on the list, but they are nice to see just to get a plan of where you are heading. Sadly it may be awhile before I see either trinket or the Oathbinder between preserving our lockout to kill LK and EPGP, but I'll get em eventaully. Thanks yet again for all the help your a very knowledgeable feral and I finally have some where to come for advice.

Hello All. I am new to this forum and feral cat as well. I started raiding as a bear and switch to tree when a top guild on my server needed a raid healer. I am enjoying healing and it has become my main spec. I have been fortunate to acquired some feral gear while healing, more DPS orientated then tanking and looking to start trying a feral hybrid spec.

I guess my first question is how do people manage addons when filling 2-3 different roles? My UI is pretty simple. I started using grid for tanking and then adapted it with some addon for resto druids based on the documentation here. The reason I ask is I will probably try FBN, Ovale or Cat’s Eye but I obvious dont need those addons when I healing and not sure if they are useful when tanking.

BTW - I wasnt sure if this was the best place to post this question. If there is a better place please let me know.

Balancing out hit rating has always been very confusing for me, especially considering how there seems to be a huge lack of gear with both ArP and Hit on it. I noticed that Tinderhoof said earlier that you don't really need to worry about Hit until after breaking 1100 ArP, but i'm getting rather close to that point now and wanted to know where I should go in terms of gear.

I have a Shadowvault Slayer's Cloak( http://www.wowhead.com/item=49998 ) available to me right now but I am really worried about my Hit falling under 100, I'm confident that I can do my rotation just fine but worried that even with a good rotation it may be a DPS loss due to bad RNG. The next pieces of gear I was looking at was the AGI Hit Ring from Marrowgar 25 and Woodin's Lucky Necklace, do you guys think I should wait to equip the Cloak until getting at least one of those pieces or just go for it now?

NOTE: -I know about the 1 random AGI gem in my gloves, waiting to replace them soon. -I use http://www.askmrrobot.com/ as a general guide for gear right now, but unsure how accurate it is since it's new. ATM it's telling me to go ahead and equip the cloak.

Thanks in advance for any advice! -Hyperspace

EDIT: I also wanted to mention that the next 2 frost pieces I was going to pick up were going to be either T10 Chest or Head, I have 10.5 gloves waiting to be converted from bear. Not sure which piece I should leave out for 4/5...

Situation being for my gear i should be doing a helluva lot more dps than what im doing. For instance last night on NORMAL saurfang. I pulled a little ober 9.5k Now seriously. I should be doing at least, at least 11k. Please help me figure out where i am going wrong. I follow ovale to the tea. And thought well it has to be Ovale that's messing me up. I cant figure it out. Some help and insite would be wonderfull if you can provide it.Thanks!

But you could be doing more, you are right. You have similar gear to me and I'm pulling 14k on that fight. Buffs may be making a difference, if you arent getting 20% haste buff or if the boss ain't getting sundered/exposed for example that will make a big difference so keep an eye out for this.

In terms of gear/gemming - I would personally trade off the hit gems for ar pen. Better to be ar pen capped and lose a bit of hit imo. Similarly, you could lose the Seal ring and get one with ar pen on it (Saurfangs or Frostbrood). You might even be tempted to drop LW for BS to get 60 more ar pen if it capped you out.

Spec looks reasonable.

Looking at your log your Rip and Rake uptime look decent tho could be improved a bit and you only did 2 bites, you could probably squeeze a few more in, tho it wont rock your world and you don't want to do it to the expense of your bleed uptime. Also, I wouldnt bother starting with a ravage, get your rotation going straight away.

Morphanator wrote:I guess my first question is how do people manage addons when filling 2-3 different roles? My UI is pretty simple. I started using grid for tanking and then adapted it with some addon for resto druids based on the documentation here. The reason I ask is I will probably try FBN, Ovale or Cat’s Eye but I obvious dont need those addons when I healing and not sure if they are useful when tanking.

BTW - I wasnt sure if this was the best place to post this question. If there is a better place please let me know.

Hi Morphanator, welcome to the forums and to feral in general.Both Alaron and I mentioned in a different thread that we use the addon Vuhdoo for our raid frames instead of grid. Vuhdoo is a powerful healing addon that lends itself well to other druid forms as we have several raid uses while in dps/tank spec (innervate, brez...). It may seem daunting to setup at first but it’s very powerful. For me I have it set up for right clicking for context. If I am in combat and the target is dead a single right click with cast brez without changing targets. If I am out of combat and the target is dead cast revive. If the target is alive and is a mana user cast innervate. This is a very simple use of the add on, as every click or Ctrl+click, Alt+click, even mouse wheel up/down can be bound to heals, hots, buffs you name it. If setup right it can be useful in any spec or roll.

For Cat dps I use ovale, and for boomkin dps I use Squawk & Awe and for tanking I don't really need one. In those cases I either move the addon I don't need off to the side if I am pressed for time, or I log out and disable the addon I dont' need. I know it sucks but I haven't found a better way of doing it yet. Hope that helps for now. If you have other questions please feel free to ask.

I am seeing something similar to Dabeasty. Looks to me like you pulled 12815.2 on that fight. Currently the fight is only taking your guild 2 min 50 secs so you wont get more then one berserker off so timing this will be key. Additionally you were never tricked or given hysteria both of which would be huge boosts in your DPS. I really wouldnt sweat it man. You only lost to a Paladin with a heroic Bryntol. You could try timing to end of the RP and pop two speed potions if you are really looking for that little extra.

After looking further i dont even see Hysteria being cast. Set up a macro to whisper your DK tank to get him to cast hysteria right as you pop berserker. It's fun seeing 35k FB's.

Balancing out hit rating has always been very confusing for me, especially considering how there seems to be a huge lack of gear with both ArP and Hit on it. I noticed that Tinderhoof said earlier that you don't really need to worry about Hit until after breaking 1100 ArP, but i'm getting rather close to that point now and wanted to know where I should go in terms of gear.

Thanks in advance for any advice! -Hyperspace

EDIT: I also wanted to mention that the next 2 frost pieces I was going to pick up were going to be either T10 Chest or Head, I have 10.5 gloves waiting to be converted from bear. Not sure which piece I should leave out for 4/5...

Hi Hyperspace, Welcome.

You are kinda at a tough place in your gearing. At this point your total focus should be on getting 4p T10 (which I know you are doing). By itself is a huge dps increase. The optimal choice for the T10 with the gloves at the off set piece if you have the Heroic Scourge Stranglers, or the Rotface gloves (forgot the name). However for you getting to 4p is more important than trying to follow a template. So getting the hat is the best way to go for now.

For hit you do want to keep at least 150 hit if you possibly can(just don’t gem for it yet). Were you are in your gear though as you start to pick up some of these hit pieces you are going to lose some arp (from your neck and ring). This is ok right now those hit pieces have much better stats then what you have now. Something you can do right now to help is take the +20 hit to gloves over +20 agility.

The Shadowvault Slayers cloak is a good one for now. It gives you a lot more stats then the expertise/hit cloak you have now. More crit will help give you more combo points which will help smooth out the rotation. After you have picked up a few hit pieces (neck off 10man festergut is pretty good to) you can then start working on putting your arp back up again. Just remember don’t spend badges on anything else until you have the Tier head and chest.

Also Ask Mr Robot is a good site to help you see what your stats are going to be after you swap gear, but I don’t think it’s been updated in over 3 months so I wouldn’t put as much stock in the simulations. Hope this helps. Let me know if you have other questions.